Overview

As more businesses rely on technology to increase profitability, improve efficiency and achieve their business goals, many turn to managed service providers (MSPs) to help them optimize and extend their IT investments through help desk, IT security, and other support services.

IronEdge Group is an MSP founded in 2005 that provides an array of technology services and customized solutions to its customers to facilitate more efficient business environments. With offices in Houston and San Antonio, IronEdge provides remote IT services for over 50 enterprise clients in banking, accounting, and manufacturing, and for more than 260 multi- tenant properties operating apartment complexes, student, and military housing across North America.

As an MSP managing in excess of 3,000 endpoints, IronEdge serves as the IT department for its business customers and provides help desk services for its property management customer sites. Since 2005, IronEdge has used Kaseya, a remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool, to manage IT environments for their growing list of customers.

Challenges

While Kaseya has been an effective solution for monitoring IronEdge’s customer IT environments, IronEdge wanted better capabilities regarding licensing and central management. With Kaseya, IronEdge had to buy licensing bundles rather than just the specific amount of licenses they needed.

Without central management of the licensing within Kaseya, it was extremely difficult for IronEdge to manage the status of every license. This was especially challenging for its property management clients where licenses had to be reallocated every time an apartment or rental property changed hands.

IronEdge was also experiencing challenges with AVG security to protect against malicious activity. AVG was the solution that Ironedge used previous to Trend Micro. Without advanced URL, malware, or content filtering, IronEdge discovered that its customers’ IT environments were not adequately protected. “We were receiving up to 90 virus activity tickets on a monthly basis. This resulted in too many on-site service calls to our customers, which impacts our profitability and the users productivity,” said Arcement.

The lack of content filtering made it particularly challenging for IronEdge to prevent unwanted or dangerous content from reaching the computers at property management sites, which were often shared by multiple users. Without remote management capabilities, IronEdge had to visit each site and apply content filters to individual machines, resulting in a process that was inefficient, time-consuming, and difficult to manage. “We had to absorb the cost of sending resources to each site every time suspicious content appeared on a computer,” said Arcement.

“Trend Micro has been a rock star for us. The combination of their solutions and their integration with Kaseya made our decision to go with Trend a no-brainer.”

Daniel Arcement,
Product Manager of IronEdge Group

Finally, without centralized management for customer IT environments, IronEdge had to log in to individual computers to reapply settings and agents. Since agent templates were specific to individual computers, this exacerbated management difficulties. “With over 3,000 endpoints, it was inefficient and problematic to manage them individually. It became clear to us that we needed to simplify our management operations,” said Arcement.

Solution

To solve all the challenges with licensing, security, and remote management challenges, IronEdge needed a solution that could address each issue and integrate seamlessly with the Kaseya platform. After testing many solutions, IronEdge acted on recommendations from their distributor and selected Trend Micro’s Licensing Management Platform (LMP), Worry-Free Business Security Services, and Worry-Free Remote Manager.

With Trend Micro’s cloud-based Worry-Free Business Security Services, IronEdge is able to protect its property management customers even if they don’t have onsite servers, since the solution is hosted and maintained by Trend Micro. Now, IronEdge’s clients are always protected from malware threats, while URL and content filtering are automatically updated to block dangerous sites and inappropriate material no matter where the computer is located.

“Cloud-based security has simplified template management for our customers. We can now spend our time more efficiently and less time worrying about hardware and software concerns,” said Arcement.

Trend Micro Worry-Free™ Remote Manager integrates seamlessly with Kaseya to provide complete IT environment management from a single pane of glass. With visibility across its customer base, IronEdge can improve its licensing management, remotely manage customer’s security, and keep its customers safe from malware and other threats.

“Trend Micro has helped us automate our management capabilities with the cloud and given us back the time we need to focus on our customers’ most pressing matters.”

Daniel Arcement,
Product Manager of IronEdge Group

“Worry-Free Remote Manager made it easy to drop customer login profiles that were no longer in use. When you work with multi-tenant property management companies who often add or drop properties from their portfolio, this is a huge time saver,” said Arcement.

Licensing Management Platform

Worry-Free Remote Manager

Worry-Free Business Security Services

Results

By integrating licensing management, cloud-based IT security, and remote management with the Kaseya platform, IronEdge gained significant time and cost savings. The Licensing Management Platform allows IronEdge to provide month-to-month licensing flexibility along with self-serve license provisioning that saves time and eliminates the need to manually track renewals and expiration dates.

“With the Licensing Management Platform, we satisfy our customers by providing IT billing and auditing reports at their request,” said Arcement. “The quicker we respond to their concerns with easy-to-understand reports, the stronger our relationships become.”

By moving its security to the cloud with Worry-Free Business Security Services, IronEdge has reduced its monthly service tickets caused by its previous solution from almost 90 tickets per month down to a fraction of that per month. This has allowed them to spend less time cleaning up viruses and more time improving their clients’ IT environments. “Now we can provide our customers with detailed resolution and virus reports that keep them aware of the evolving threat landscape,” said Arcement.

Worry-FreeTM Business Security Services also improved efficiency and security for IronEdge customers. “The cloud-based security provided significant cost savings in manpower while providing URL and content filtering along with enterprise-level security—with no added cost to our customers,” said Arcement. “Our protection against viruses, hackers, and spyware is automatic and easy to deploy across our wide range of customers.”

IronEdge monitors its customers’ IT security from a single screen with Worry-Free Remote Manager, improving operational efficiency and reducing on-site visits. IronEdge also leverages deeper security insight through graphical reports and summary dashboard data. “We can now provide our customers with an enhanced service experience with the improvements in our billing information, alerting, and management,” said Arcement.

IronEdge looks forward to its growing partnership with Trend Micro as the IT landscape continues to evolve. “Trend Micro has the service and support that makes them a great partner,” says Arcement. “You just don’t see other solutions that provide the same cloud-based management services as Trend does.”